Kickstarter has Kickstarted!

Thank you all for your fantastic messages in my last post. Reading your notes and texts and messages and emails has made me feel really great about What Comes Next in my creative and professional life!

So… what does come next? The short version is this:

I want to make a beautiful knitting book which shows you how to translate everyday things into stranded colourwork. My book will celebrate such everyday things as biscuit tins and sloes, and show you how to turn them into things you can wear and admire. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present The KNITSONIK Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook of my dreamz!

It is going to be a book about seeing the everyday world through a specific, knitterly lens…

…I want to show the creative process of turning the messy, beautiful, gorgeous chaos of the world we live in, into stitches which we can wear…

…stitches which will remind us who we are; where we live; and why we love it.

As well as speaking specifically about my life here in Reading and the things which inspire me to knit, The KNITSONIK Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook will show you how to translate your own wonderful object collections and wild harvests into stranded colourwork.

Long-term readers will know that this is not a new obsession for me, but a sustained, creative project. After years of exploring this theme here and there in bursts, I feel that right now I have the energy to bring it together. I have done a lot of the knitting, and now I just need some time to devote myself fully to it, and to know that I have enough donuts in the bank to pay for it to be printed and designed.

That’s where Kickstarter comes in.

I’ve done enough ambitious, creative projects to know that I am READY to make this book. I do not want to waste time trying to negotiate a publishing deal, messing around with funding applications etc. If my campaign is successful, I can literally just go ahead and MAKE THIS BOOK!

Also, this is a slightly different sort of knitting book, and using Kickstarter is a way of gauging how much desire exists in the world for a book which tells you how to turn your everyday inspirations into stranded colourwork.

As well as being amazing for these reasons – urgency, immediacy, publicity – I don’t mind admitting here that running a Kickstarter campaign is scary. It means putting yourself out there and saying “hey, I need your help”.

But you know what? I do.

My campaign is running for 30 days and I need to make all the money necessary to bring the project to life. If I can’t raise the total required fundage, the book simply can’t happen in the way that I’m going for, here. I must get the word out there while I can!

Wishing you the very best with this! I’ll be making a donation before it ends (I’m skint as buggery today). I did share on a couple of Ravelry groups, one for peeps who knit with Wollmeise yarn, and also in the ‘Stranded’ group – hope you don’t mind 🙂

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